We know so little about the ocean.
What’s in it (Dolphins).
What’s on it (Seagulls).
But that guy.^
Knows a whole lot. Ryan Petersen (RP). My guy!
The year is 2002.
And RP works for his brother.
Selling motorcycles.
(Buy from China. Sell in America).
Trade logistics, BABY.
He learns A LOT. And we call this -
Freight forwarding.*
AKA the coordination layer between ships, ports, trains, and trucks. (What?!)
Okay. Some vocab.
A parcel is small and light. A freight is big and heavy.
Motorcycles. Are big and heavy. And a ton of companies are involved in getting that freight from A to B. (China to America).
One company (FedEx, UPS, Amazon) can track a parcel end to end.
That’s because - parcels fit down conveyor belts. And they’re light enough to lift. That’s not the case in the freight world. You can’t fit a motorcycle down a conveyor belt. And you can’t can scan the same QR code throughout the process. There are up to 18 companies involved in a single freight transaction.
A piece of paper literally serves as the title to Ryan’s motorcycle.
So yeah.
Global trade is a black box. Filled with weird fees and slow transit times. (And ships, ports, trains, and trucks). With no software to track it all.
So Ryan moves to China.
To figure all this out.*
Here’s the thing about success.
It’s embedded in failure.
Ryan doesn’t fail.
But Flexport. (The company we’re talking about today). Is a culmination of all his previous ventures.
AKA.
His landing pages, BABY.
That’s right. RP builds a bunch of websites before investing any capital. (To see what hits).
Okay.
Importgenius.com.
It’s his first biz out of grad school. And yeah. He does it with his brother.
They take public data and make it actionable.* (Actionable. What a fluff word. Bump the footnotes).
🧐
In this case, Importgenius.com tracks shipping data from public records to show you (customer) what’s happening in terms of global imports/exports.
GET THIS. Their public manifest database predicts the launch of the iPhone 3G. Steve Jobs literally calls US Customs to shut the boys up.
I digress.
The two brothers build search engines.
Again.
And again.
Until one search engine - BuildZoom - lands David (Ryan’s brother) in Y Combinator.*
Okay.
Back to 2010.
Ryan builds a webpage for Flexport. And it drives a ton of traffic.
We’re talking -
Saudi Aramco. Foxconn. Cargill. BIG companies. They all want it.
That’s because -
You know nothing about the world until you embrace it.
And yeah. Selling motorcycles/building websites enabled Ryan to understand real world business processes. (And what software solutions are actually needed). Like clearing customs, cargo insurance, freight transportation, and inventory financing.
We call this -
Domain knowledge, BABY.
Okay.
It takes three YEARS for the government to grant Ryan an operational license.
At which point - Ryan’s 🤝 all 🤝 in.
He moves to San Francisco. He hires three coders. And yeah. He joins Y Combinator.
Look. I get it. This stuff isn’t intuitive. So here’s a dashboard. Of what Flexport actually does.
Here’s the thing about Ryan’s execution.
He moves.
A lot. (China for motorcycles, SF for Y Combinator, Arizona for Importgenius.com). He speaks five languages. The world doesn’t work the way we think it does. Leaning in. Means fixing global trade.
So take one from Ryan Petersen. There’s a heck of a lot more to the ocean than dolphins and seagulls. HE’S AN OPERATOR, BABY!
And that’s the skinny.
* In terms of freight - There are ports all around the world. And every port needs to be connected to every other port. 20,000 “TEUs” (twenty-foot equivalents) fit on one ship. TEUs are a GLOBAL freight standard. Hence why all cargo containers look the same. You strap two TEUs to a truck. And that truck meets the ship at the port. Therefore - 10,000 trucks need to meet one single ship at that port. And ships arrive all throughout the day. The complexity, man. It’s crazy.
(Planes aren’t involved in moving freight. A cargo container is a standardized rectangle. And that just doesn’t work for planes - totally different aerodynamics).
The TEU standard is WRONG. A truck is 53 feet long. That means we’re losing 13 feet of space per truck. (Since there are two TEUs per truck).
* I love this meme.
*Tech’s favorite buzzword 🙄
*Y Combinator. AKA Silicon Valley’s most prestigious tech incubator. The founders of Stripe, Coinbase, Airbnb, etc… all graduated from a YC cohort.
* I’m from Bakersfield, California. And this is my friend’s shop. I just loooove the concept. Converted freight container. I mean (!!!)
